Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/15

 unions.

The Statistical Bureau of the United States Railroad Labor Board in 1924 prepared a list of local and unaffiliated labor organizations almost all of which, with the exception of the American Federation of Railroad Workers, and a few smaller organizations, could be described as company unions. All of them, furthermore, represent some class or craft of workers in regular negotiations with the railway companies. This list is incomplete in some respects, but it includes some 64 railroads, 22 of them classified as eastern roads, 17 in the southeast, and 25 in the west. The list covers some 300 separate associations and organizations on these 64 roads. None of them are affiliated with the Big Four train service brotherhoods or with the railroad labor unions operating under the banner of the A. F. of L.

Some of the railway company unions are small and local, while others comprise the workers over whole systems and include scores of shop committees, lodges, and locals. The following classes of workers are included in this list of associations: Clerical and Station Forces, Maintenance of Way and Structures and Unskilled Forces, Supervisors of Mechanics, Shop Crafts (including boilermakers, machinists, electrical workers, blacksmiths, sheet metal workers, carmen, linemen, and other mechanical workers), Telegraphers, Enginemen and Firemen, Signalmen, Train Dispatchers, Yardmasters, Dining Car and Restaurant Employees, Marine Department Employees, Train Porters, and Miscellaneous Employees.

The largest inroads on the regular railway unions have been made among the shop craft workers' organizations, the clerical workers, and the maintenance of way men—those unions which experienced a rapid growth during the period of government control of railroads, but which suffered